Elder Scrolls: Skyrim is definitely a GOTY 2011 contender and has left very little room for improvement to the next chapter in the Elder Scrolls saga, but that doesn’t mean there is nothing the next installment can do to top it.

5. Bring back Unarmored/Acrobatics/Athletics

Ever since the introduction of level scaling, Elder Scrolls has had a big emphasis on player skill as opposed to levels and stats. Good tactical movement is essential to winning a lot of fights in Tamriel, so these 3 skills not seen since Morrowind could be brought back as part of a single skill tree granting big evasive bonuses (passive as well as fancy backflips) to unarmored players with smaller bonuses for lightly armored players.

4. Bring back crossbows and thrown weapons

It was a little bit frustrating that the dragons in Skyrim pretty much required every character to have a bow or be good with magic. It would be nice to diversify ranged combat a little further by making crossbows slow and powerful (ideal for assasinations), while bows would be the middle ground for prolonged ranged combat. Thrown weapons shouldn’t do a lot of damage, but should be usable in the off-hand while closing in to meele and have a faster refire rate to make them easier to use while moving. It would be hard to enchant every thrown dagger/shuriken, so why not have equippable satchels that you load up with projectiles like you load up a bow with arrows?

3. Flying mounts

There’s a word for people who never thought about putting a saddle onto one of the dragons in Skyrim – they’re called liars. With how beautiful the Elder Scrolls world has become, getting a bird’s eye view while travelling would feel epic. These mounts should only be able to remain airborne for an X amount of in-game hours per in-game day to prevent making travel too easy.

2. Mounted combat

It gets really annoying when you’re riding through Skyrim and get attacked by low level enemies like mudcrabs and wolves because you know you can take them no problem, but you’d have to stop your journey. Wouldn’t it be nice to just pop an arrow in them and keep going? Even better, imagine riding on autopilot, desperately shooting back at the dragon or a gang of bandits on horseback chasing you. It would make outdoor combat too easy against enemies on foot, but this can be made up for by sharing the player’s hp with the mount’s, making them more vulnerable to ranged attacks because of the larger hit box.

1. Multiple companions

A great thing about the original Fallouts was the choice between wandering the Wastes on your own and having a “crew”. Since Elder Scrolls doesn’t have multiplayer, a great way to see how several builds work together in a team would be to get 2 or more fully editable companions, complete with you telling them what weapons to use, what skills to build up, when to attack or run etc. The combat difficulty should scale depending on the amount of teammates you have. It would be especially nice to outfit your companions with mounts because immersion takes a slight dip when you’re riding on horseback with the follower chasing you on foot.